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> On the other hand, do we really want a handful of unelected billionaires deciding what is acceptable speech - whether or not we agree with them? We talk about

• ruined 6y ago
  This same power has been used, on a less dramatic scale over the past year and for a long time before now, to attack police reform activists and disrupt organizing of the local activist communities that exist to oppose this shit on the ground. It's not really a situation of "this may be socially chilling", it's been happening, and now it's just the first time they contravened the president and made the news cycle. I don't really see any other decision they could have made this past week. But if social media and capital in general would stop kneecapping every political option but ineffective liberalism and dogwhistle fascism, maybe the large numbers of people who are angry and feel helpless would currently have a pressure valve in a healthier direction. Three or four massive companies with incentives to suppress the slightest disruption to profit, that hold unprecedented surveillance power, and exercise detailed control over individual and mass communication, that make apparently ideological decisions about who is allowed to exist online, are not compatible with a healthy society or any path that could lead us out of this situation.
  • creato 6y ago
    "Opposing this shit on the ground" is why we're in this nightmare in the first place. Imagine if there had been counterprotestors "opposing this shit on the ground" at the Capitol insurrection: we'd probably be pretty fucking close to a civil war right now instead of near universal condemnation of the extremist forces. If you have anything to do with "opposing this shit on the ground", please fucking stop. You are accomplishing less than nothing.
    • ruined 6y ago
      christ. i'm talking about doing actual organizing work. i assure you nobody wants to put life on the line and throw down for friggin congress
• esoterica 6y ago
  The constitution prohibits the government from banning political speech unless it will, e.g. incite imminent violence. Keyword being imminent. Merely supporting violence in general and non-specific terms is not illegal and cannot be made illegal under the constitution, so the government cannot decide to ban most of the types of speech that the tech companies have chosen to ban (including Trump's recent tweets that got him banned). If you think it is good that the recent bans took place then you have no choice but to delegate decision making authority to the industry, because the government is not constitutionally permitted to demand that tech companies make those decisions.
  • Grimm1 6y ago
    My understanding is multiple posts on Parler did match our incitement laws even up to planning events to come in the next few weeks.
    • amanaplanacanal 6y ago
      I guess it’s theoretically possible to set up an arm of law enforcement whose sole job would be to monitor all social media, along with a judicial division that could stand at the ready to issue court orders for comment takedowns. Maybe.
      • no-s 6y ago
        >>I guess it’s theoretically possible to set up an arm of law enforcement whose sole job would be to monitor all social media, along with a judicial division that could stand at the ready to issue court orders for comment takedowns not theoretic (not pumping my post but amusing you would comment simultaneously with my noticing this): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25749923 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25749923
    • scruple 6y ago
      My understanding was that planning was happening on multiple social media sites, notably Facebook.
• armagon 6y ago
  From an optics point of view, if it looked like they were handling all users the same way, there'd be so much less of a problem here. But right now, it is like selective law enforcement -- action will be taken if we don't like you, much more than whether you are deemed to be complying with the terms of service. What they could've done is consistently enforced their rules all the way along, to people of all political persuasions.
  • sanderjd 6y ago
    Is there evidence that there are other AWS customers with easily discoverable content that incites violence, which AWS is not working to have removed due to their terms of service?
    • imwillofficial 6y ago
      I find the phrase “incite violence” to be a deceptive term to use. A threat of violence is a very defined term. Both legally and in common understanding. “Incites violence” is vague and takes the responsibility away from the one conducting violence, and places it on somebody else who may or may not have been promoting violence. It’s usage is not defined legally or in common usage. “Barney is the worst dinosaur” could be “inciting violence” if somebody attacked the purple children’s mascot. Should we have to mute ourselves because crazy people might use our words as justification for their madness? Should others censor my opinions because in their opinion, a third party might use my words for justification for their madness?
      • germinalphrase 6y ago
        “Incitement” has absolutely been defined legally by the US Supreme Court. See: Brandenburg v. Ohio, 395 US 444 (1969) https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/brandenburg_test https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/brandenburg_test https://www.oyez.org/cases/1968/492 https://www.oyez.org/cases/1968/492
        • imwillofficial 6y ago
• briandear 6y ago
  Did Pelosi use Twitter to promote lies about an election? Was she banned? We’re her tweets labeled/tagged/removed? Here you go: https://twitter.com/speakerpelosi/status/864522009048494080?s=21 https://twitter.com/speakerpelosi/status/864522009048494080?... And Hillary Clinton was, for years, claiming the election was “stolen” from her. “Stolen” is her word, not mine. Is she not responsible for whipping people into a frenzy over election integrity? https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2019/05/06/hillary-clinton-warns-2020-democratic-candidates-stolen-election/1116477001/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2019... 10 Democrat congresspeople objected to the electoral count in 2016, including Sheila Jackson-Lee challenged the electoral count in 2016. That they didn’t get a Senator to also challenge doesn’t change their own opposition to the election. Is Shiela Jackson-Lee deplatformed? Or course not. She’s a member of the congressional black caucus. She, an violence-promoting Maxine Waters get a pass from the hand-wringing of the tech and leftist “elites.” https://www.politico.com/story/2017/01/house-democrats-trump-electoral-college-233264 https://www.politico.com/story/2017/01/house-democrats-trump... https://www.cnn.com/2018/06/25/politics/maxine-waters-trump-officials/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2018/06/25/politics/maxine-waters-trump-... People on the left are gigantic hypocrites. And liars. Conveniently ascribing to Trump what they have been doing since before November 2016. There are hundreds of not thousands of examples of outright hypocrisy. Another example: violence committed against Senator Rand Paul was cheered by Twitter users. Accounts weren’t purged, nor users banned en mass. The assassination attempt of Congressman Scalise — no punishment of Bernie Sanders’ campaign for inspiring hatred of Republicans that led to a self proclaimed “Bernie Bro” from firing over 50 shots in an attempt to kill Republicans. Where is the “community standards” enforcement around people on Twitter that celebrate this actual violence against elected officials? Hypocrites and phonies. That’s what the tech “elites” and leftist are.
  • smithza 6y ago
    This is a false equivalence. The clearest reason is that zero of these cases resulted in sedition. This argument is distracting, it is classic whataboutism. In no way is it the case that moderating the app stores and shutting down access to Parler or the President's Tweets equivalent to condoning Clinton's or Jackson-Lee's or Sander's actions. I recommend that you look at this particular case and draw your conclusions about it without complaining about the failure to respond the same way to very different situations from other people years prior.
• dchichkov 6y ago
  As per Wikipedia: "A majority of developed democracies have laws that restrict hate speech, including Australia, Denmark, France, Germany, India, South Africa, Sweden, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom." The Unites States is not in that list. Hence it is more vulnerable to problems associated with allowing hate speech (i.e. incitement of violence by foreign-state actors, etc.). Companies that operate on the global markets tend to operate with the standards that are acceptable globally. In particular: "On 31 May 2016, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Twitter, jointly agreed to a European Union code of conduct obligating them to review "[the] majority of valid notifications for removal of illegal hate speech" posted on their services within 24 hours." So in that particular case, influence of these companies might be bringing United States closer to best practices adopted in the majority of developed democracies.
  • jbay808 6y ago
    Personally, I want the government to set the rules on hate speech, and private companies to follow them.
  • umvi 6y ago
    > So in that particular case, influence of these companies might be bringing United States closer to best practices adopted in the majority of developed democracies. Best practices for maintaining a democracy or best practices for maintaining social order? There's a difference. You might argue that restricting hate speech is actually a step away from democracy towards more government control.
    • dchichkov 6y ago
      You can look at the following parameters that are critical for the health of democracies: electoral process and pluralism, civil liberties, the functioning of government, political participation, and political culture. And consider how moderation of hate speech affects these parameters. Evaluating these on an example of presidential debates of 2020 might be a good option. As there is a contrast between the first debate, that included no moderation and a second debate, that included some.
• dionian 6y ago
  If they are lies then why can't they be refuted instead of suppressed?
  • xxpor 6y ago
    This was my attitude too until about 3 years ago. But we're dealing with a group of people who genuinely believe that Trump is saving the world from a cabal of cannibalistic pedophiles, and if Biden becomes president they'll all be carted off to FEMA camps. How do you reason with someone like that?
  • dragonwriter 6y ago
    > If they are lies then why can't they be refuted instead of suppressed? It's harder to refute lies in the marketplace of ideas if everyone with a megaphone is obligated to echo them. Perhaps this wouldn't be true if people were perfectly rational, but if people were perfectly rational they wouldn't be believing and spreading lies in the first place.
  • pixl97 6y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandolini%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandolini%27s_law >Brandolini's law, also known as the bullshit asymmetry principle, is an internet adage which emphasizes the difficulty of debunking bullshit: "The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude larger than to produce it."
• listless 6y ago
  I find myself in the exact same position. It's one thing if I say the election was stolen. I should not be censored for saying that it was. My voice alone will not sway anything. The problem is that so much power is concentrated with the president that it ONLY takes his voice to throw an entire country into chaos. That's too much power with one person. So what am I saying? That I should have freedoms the president should not?
  • coryfklein 6y ago
    > That's too much power with one person. Well, the USA could impeach and remove that person, or they could reduce the power of his office. But so far the people and their elected representatives have opted not to do either of those things.
• umvi 6y ago
  > Good for them, what was their other choice? "do nothing", just like they did nothing when riots were breaking out in BLM protests.